The Stations of East Galicia

VIP Preview at the Warsaw Railway Museum 27 March 2010.
From a photograph by Michael Dembinski

Pioneering Warsaw blogger Michael Dembinski, managed to wrangle himself an invitation to the VIP preview of the Dworce Kolejowe Galicji Wschodnej (The railway stations of East Galicia) exhibition at the Warsaw Railway Museum. Click the image above to read his full report on the W-wa Jeziorki blog.

The exhibition features the photography of Marta Czerwieniec who, as well as being interested in railway infrastructure, is an expert on geneaology. While tracking her own family history she discovered that her great grandfather, Karol Stronczynski, was a railway engineer. He was a graduate of the Technical Academy in St Petersburg and later went on to design bridges and viaducts on railway lines on Poland’s eastern borders and in Russia.

It is greatly encouraging to see that Ferdynand Ruszczyc, the Museum Director, is actually running an event with a railway theme as opposed to holding more fashion shows and beauty competitions!

One Response to “The Stations of East Galicia”

Extremely interesting material – thanks, Mr. D. Being anorak-ish to a high degree: Antonowka, mentioned in the blog item, is of some gricing fame in that it is the junction with the standard gauge, of a 750mm gauge line, what’s left of a once larger system (PKP until 1939). One of few surviving passenger narrow gauge lines in this part of the world: as per most recent knowledge, still has a vestigial passenger service, run by Ukrainian State Railways, between Antonowka and Zaricne, some 100km to the north.

I’ve always found these former eastern tracts of Poland, ‘lost’ since 1939, fascinating – largely, I suspect, because for many decades they were places where Westerners just could not go.